1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fused solid electrolytic capacitor and more specifically to a fuse wire-connecting structure of the fused solid electrolytic capacitor.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Chip type solid electrolytic capacitors having a low fault rate have widely been used in a variety of electronic circuits. A possible fault is the formation of a short circuit which leads to excessive heating of the capacitor element and, in the worst case, results in burning of the capacitor. For this reason, a fuse has been incorporated into a solid electrolytic capacitor of this type.
Up to now, various kinds of such fused solid electrolytic capacitors have been proposed. For instance, there has been known a fused solid electrolytic capacitor in which a part of a cathode layer at the outer periphery of a solid electrolytic capacitor element is coated with an insulating material, the cathode layer is connected to an external cathode terminal through a fuse wire and the capacitor is packaged with an insulating material (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Sho 62-237716); or which comprises, as shown in FIG. 1, an anode part comprising an anode lead 2 implanted in a solid electrolytic capacitor element 1 at the central portion thereof and an anode external terminal 6 which are connected to one another through, for instance, welding and a cathode part comprising a cathode external terminal 7 and a fuse wire 3 which connects the cathode external terminal to the surface of the capacitor element 1 through soldering and a resin layer packaging the element.
The fused solid electrolytic capacitors described above have a structure in which, after connecting an anode lead to an external anode terminal, the surface of the capacitor element is electrically connected to an external cathode terminal through a fuse wire and, therefore, the connection and shaping of the fuse wire are very difficult. Further, the fuse wire is not fixed except for the ends thereof and thus the capacitor suffers from a variety of drawbacks such as breakage of the fuse wire after the connection thereof due to, for instance, vibration which leads to the reduction in production yield. Accordingly, visual inspection is required after the connection of the fuse and correspondingly mass-production of the capacitors of this type is very difficult.